Marvel Puzzle Quest is not simply about making the biggest or quickest matches. It’s a deceptively deep form of match three, with – effectively – two different match types.

Firstly, when you’re fighting super villains (or other heroes in multiplayer), the aim is twofold: match the colours that fuel your team’s powers while stopping the enemy team powering up. If you’re battling Venom, for example, it’s wise to make black and pink matches before he does.

You’ll also battle human (but still CPU-controlled) opponents who leave timed tiles around the playing area. These should be your only focus, since they can cause massive damage. Humans don’t have powers, and they don’t move pieces.

Another very basic tip: making a match of four or more destroys the entire row and/or column, which is handy for getting rid of those timed tiles.

Marvel Puzzle Quest tip 2: Multiplayer: who’s powered up?

When you jump into multiplayer events (and you really should; they’re incredibly generous with prizes), pay attention to which heroes are powered up. That modest level 8 Thor might suddenly become a beast.

Powered up heroes are denoted by little red crystal thingies on the team selection screen.

Marvel Puzzle Quest tip 3: Don’t do the suggested moves

Like most match three games, there’s a suggested move that highlights a potential match three. Sometimes there are only one or two possible matches, but there doesn’t seem to be much logic behind the suggested move; it’s not necessarily your best option.

Marvel Puzzle Quest tip 4: Don’t spend your ISO on new characters

Under Recruit Heroes, you can grab a random new team member for 500 ISO, but it’s rarely worth it. You’re far better off investing your ISO in levelling up existing team members, and grabbing comic covers (new characters/powers) by completing challenges; challenges that will be significantly easier if you’ve invested in levelling up. It’s the circle of life.

And say you get a character you don’t want to keep, you can generally sell them for around 100 ISO, which is a loss of 400. Boo.

We’ve all been there. You spy a new rare character as an Event prize, and spend several hours grinding your way up the rankings in a desperate bid to win said character.

But take a step back and think about it for a second. The rare characters are inherently useless, since you can’t level them up. For that, you need further comic covers*, but they are – by definition – rare.

*Or, of course, you can pay real money.

Marvel Puzzle Quest tip 6: Don’t waste specials

There’s very rarely an occasion when you’ll want to hold onto a special move, especially if it causes massive damage (as opposed to, say, freezing opponents or healing team members). Pay attention to those special meters, and unleash the beasts as soon as possible. If you hold back, you only risk being knocked out.

Similarly, let’s say you’re battling two opponents, one with 700 health, one with 1,500, and Iron Man is ready to cause 1,000 damage; it makes sense to apply that 1,000 to the character with the higher health allowance. Do 1,000 damage to a character with 700 health and you’ve wasted 300 damage, tempting as it might be to go straight for the knockout.

Marvel Puzzle Quest tip 7: Prioritise the countdown tiles (skulls)

On some of the more difficult levels, you’ll find it’s impossible to deal with all countdown tiles effectively, so prioritisation is the name of the game.

You can check their effects with a quick tap. Some are relatively inane, such as Morale Boost (a slight health boost), and can be ignored in favour of more dangerous tiles like Rocket Attack (or whatever the heck it’s called).

Goodbye

And so endeth my Marvel Puzzle Quest tips session. If you have anything to add, hit us up with a comment below.